An Incomplete Guide to Solving Problems You Have No Business Solving

The call came through at 3:47 PM on a Thursday, which is the exact time coordinates when the universe conspires to hand you problems that make your undergraduate computer science education feel about as useful as a chocolate teapot in a sauna¹. Marcus Chen, the CTO of one of our largest managed services clients, was attempting to maintain the kind of professional composure typically reserved for hostage negotiators while describing what appeared to be a sophisticated attack across multiple network segments. This was the sort of advanced persistent threat that I'd read about in cybersecurity journals with the same detached academic interest one might apply to reading about extinct predatory birds, never imagining I'd need to actually defend against either².

As the newest member of our IT consulting firm's security team, a designation that carried roughly the same practical authority as being appointed "Chief Unicorn Wrangler," I possessed exactly fourteen minutes of real-world incident response experience, most of which involved password resets and the occasional malware cleanup³. My manager was stuck in traffic returning from a client meeting, our senior security analyst was presenting at a conference in Las Vegas, and our third team member had called in sick with what he claimed was food poisoning but sounded suspiciously like the kind of intestinal distress from too little wisdom and too much tequila.

"You're the only one available," said Janet from dispatch, forwarding me the client's emergency contact information with the cheerful efficiency of someone handing you a live grenade wrapped in birthday paper. "They're expecting someone on-site within the hour, and they want updates every thirty minutes."

And there it was: the moment when I realized adult professional life is essentially an extended exercise in being thrown into situations for which you are grotesquely unqualified, followed by the societal expectation that you'll somehow metamorphose into the person who can handle them, a transformation that makes the lifecycle of a butterfly seem straightforward by comparison⁴.

The Peculiar Alchemy of Problem-Solving

What nobody prepares you for about crisis management (and by "nobody" I mean the entire educational-industrial complex that spends four years teaching you theoretical frameworks while carefully avoiding any mention of what it feels like when those frameworks spontaneously combust upon contact with reality) is it's less about having all the answers and more about developing the psychological resilience to find answers while everyone is watching you with the kind of expectant stare typically reserved for zoo animals expected to perform tricks on command.

The attack was sophisticated in the way that a Swiss watch is sophisticated, beautiful, precise, and utterly incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't spent years learning how all the tiny pieces work together to create the illusion of something simple⁵. Instead of the obvious smash-and-grab tactics we'd trained for (preparing for burglars by practicing with people who announce their intentions and knock politely), this was surgical: compromised credentials, living-off-the-land techniques⁶, and movement patterns designed to blend with normal network traffic the way a skilled con artist blends with a cocktail party.

Every textbook I'd read suddenly felt about as useful as a map of Ancient Rome for navigating modern Detroit.

But here's what I discovered during those first chaotic hours, while my antiperspirant had developed performance anxiety: the most valuable skill isn't knowing everything. It's knowing how to systematically figure out what you don't know without having a complete psychological breakdown in the process. Psychologists call this "metacognition," which is thinking about thinking.⁷

The people who become indispensable—and I mean the kind of indispensable that makes organizations fight over you like seagulls fighting over a dropped sandwich—aren't those who never encounter problems beyond their expertise. They're the ones who can reliably transform unfamiliar challenges into manageable tasks, the way a skilled translator converts incomprehensible foreign languages into something resembling coherent thought.

When was the last time someone handed you a problem you had no business solving? And more importantly, what was your first instinct? To explain in elaborate detail why you couldn't handle it (which is the professional equivalent of a peacock displaying its plumage to signal unsuitability)? Or to start mapping what you'd need to learn to make the impossible merely difficult?

The Deceptive Mathematics of Value Creation

Six hours into the incident, I had contained the immediate threat, documented the attack vectors, and briefed the client's executive team twice with the kind of confident authority that would have impressed me if I hadn't known how terrified the person delivering it actually was. I felt accomplished in the way one feels accomplished after successfully assembling IKEA furniture: proud, slightly surprised, and vaguely suspicious that something important had been overlooked⁸.

I had also learned precisely nothing about creating lasting value for the organization, which is equivalent to putting out fires without understanding why buildings catch fire in the first place.

The real work began the next morning: building detection rules to prevent similar attacks, updating our incident response procedures, training the rest of the team on the new threat patterns. This wasn't exciting work in the way that skydiving is exciting. Nobody would congratulate me for writing better documentation or improving our monitoring capabilities. But this was where actual value got created, in the same way that a foundation creates value for a house, which is invisibly and without fanfare until something goes catastrophically wrong.

Here's an uncomfortable truth about professional life nobody mentions during career orientation sessions (probably because it would cause mass exodus from the workforce): people don't pay you for the dramatic saves or the heroic overtime sessions that make for good stories at dinner parties. They pay you for making problems disappear permanently, the way a good plumber makes water flow correctly, not glamorous, rarely celebrated, but absolutely essential for basic human civilization⁹.

The incident response was visible and urgent, like a house fire; the systematic improvements were invisible and preventative, like properly functioning smoke detectors. Guess which one actually mattered to the business? If you guessed the fire, you're thinking like a human being. If you guessed the smoke detectors, you're thinking like someone who understands how value actually gets created in organizations.

Value creation has mathematics that would make a quantum physicist weep with frustration. The most important work often feels mundane in the moment, like watching paint dry or grass grow, except the paint is organizational competence and the grass is competitive advantage. Building something durable requires patience with processes others find boring (like watching geological formations develop), attention to details others overlook (like proofreading the fine print on contracts), and commitment to standards others consider unnecessary (like washing your hands before surgery¹⁰).

Consider your current role with the kind of brutal honesty typically reserved for divorce proceedings. Strip away the meetings that accomplish nothing, the emails that exist to create the illusion of productivity, the urgent requests that feel important but change absolutely nothing. What would remain broken if you disappeared tomorrow? What problems would nobody else think to solve because they lack either the expertise or the motivation to notice them?

The Compound Interest of Reliability

Three months after the incident, I had become the person others called when strange things happened on the network, not because I was the smartest or most experienced (I manifestly was not), but because I had developed a reputation for getting problems resolved without creating additional problems in the process, which is just being a surgeon who doesn't accidentally leave instruments inside patients.

My best friend's uncle spent four decades maintaining telephone switching equipment, back when telephones were physical objects connected by actual wires rather than the mystical electromagnetic signals we now use to transmit pictures of our meals to strangers¹¹. He wasn't brilliant or innovative. He was just the person who showed up every day and made sure things worked, the way gravity shows up every day and makes sure things fall down instead of floating randomly through space.

"You'll achieve much more by being consistently reliable than by being occasionally extraordinary," he told me once, while I was going through my phase of believing that success required constant brilliance and dramatic gestures. I dismissed this as the philosophy of someone who had settled for mediocrity, which is the kind of arrogant stupidity that only someone who has never tried to be consistently reliable for more than a week would embrace.

I was spectacularly, embarrassingly, cosmically wrong.

Reliability is the compound interest of professional relationships. Day by day, it seems unremarkable, like watching savings account balances grow or tectonic plates shift. Over time, it builds into something powerful enough to reshape entire career landscapes. People stop worrying about whether you'll deliver and start focusing their mental energy on what to give you next. They associate your name with problems getting solved rather than problems getting complicated–to being associated with solutions rather than additional headaches.

But here's what's counterintuitive about reliability, in the way that most valuable insights are counterintuitive: it's not just meeting expectations. It's about reducing cognitive load for everyone around you, the way a well-designed user interface reduces the mental effort required to accomplish tasks. When people can predict how you'll handle things, they can focus their precious and limited mental energy on other challenges rather than worrying about whether you'll follow through.

The Feedback Paradox

The post-incident review wasn't comfortable in the way dental surgery isn't comfortable, necessary for long-term health but requiring local anesthesia and a strong stomach. Our security posture had more vulnerabilities than a screen door submarine during a hurricane¹². When I presented my findings to the leadership team, I expected the kind of defensive responses typically reserved for accusations of professional incompetence or suggestions that their children might be adopted.

Instead, the CTO leaned forward with the kind of intense focus usually reserved for lottery numbers and asked, "What do we need to change?"

Everyone claims they want feedback the way everyone claims they want to exercise more and eat vegetables. It sounds virtuous in theory but proves surprisingly difficult in practice. Most people mean they want validation disguised as feedback, the way politicians want "tough questions" that have been pre-approved by their communications teams. Real feedback, the kind that actually improves performance rather than merely stroking egos, requires admitting that your current approach might be insufficient, which is roughly as comfortable as admitting you've been wearing your pants backwards for the past decade.

The people who actively seek discomfort, who put themselves in situations where they feel slightly out of place (like wearing formal attire to a beach party), who ask direct questions about their weaknesses. These people develop immunity to the fear that keeps others stagnant, the way vaccination develops immunity to diseases. They understand that feeling uncomfortable usually indicates growth rather than failure, which is counterintuitive because evolution designed us to interpret discomfort as a warning signal rather than a development opportunity.

When was the last time you deliberately sought criticism of your work? Not suggestions for improvement (which everyone can tolerate) or constructive feedback (which sounds nice), but honest assessment of current mistakes that make you question your basic competence?

The Energy Equation vs. The Passion Trap

Six months later, I found myself designing security awareness training for the entire organization. I might as well have been asked to teach quantum physics to golden retrievers. It was well-intentioned, probably necessary, but requiring a fundamental rethinking of how information transfer actually works¹³. I had no background in education (unless you count explaining computer problems to relatives), no expertise in human psychology (beyond the basic understanding that people click on things they shouldn't), and no particular talent for public speaking (my previous presentations had the inspirational power of a DMV instruction manual).

What I had was energy for solving the problem of why people kept clicking suspicious links despite repeated warnings, which is the cybersecurity version of wondering why people keep touching "Wet Paint" signs.

The distinction between following your passion and following your energy is subtle but crucial, like the difference between a crush and actual love—one is a story you tell yourself about what you should want, the other is what actually happens in your body when you encounter specific stimuli. Passion is often a narrative we construct about our ideal selves; energy is the honest physiological response to real activities.

Watch yourself for a week with the clinical detachment of a scientist observing lab specimens. Notice when you lean forward versus when you lean back. Notice when time moves quickly (like when you're absorbed in solving interesting problems) versus when every minute drags (like when you're in meetings about meetings). Notice when you find yourself thinking about work problems during other activities versus when you need to force attention through sheer willpower, the way you might force yourself to pay attention during a tax preparation seminar¹⁴.

Energy never lies–even when rational analysis suggests otherwise. It's the most honest advisor you'll ever have, more reliable than market research or career counselors or well-meaning relatives who think they know what's best for you. Some of the most successful people I know are doing work they never planned for but discovered they had natural energy toward. Rivers discover their paths by following the terrain rather than consulting topographical maps.

The Selection Problem: Choosing Your Games

One insight from behavioral economics that would be obvious if human psychology weren't so beautifully, frustratingly irrational: having too many options often leads to worse decisions than having fewer options. When faced with endless possibilities, we either become paralyzed by choice (like someone staring at a Cheesecake Factory menu) or make selections based on irrelevant factors (like choosing the most attractively photographed dish rather than the one we'd actually enjoy eating).

Career development follows the same perverse mathematics. The most successful people aren't those who kept all options open. They're those who became exceptionally good at specific things, then found ways to apply those strengths to increasingly important problems. This requires self-awareness of the sort typically avoided by people who prefer comfortable delusions about their unlimited potential.

It means understanding not just what you're good at, but what you're better at than the people around you, which requires the kind of honest self-assessment that most people avoid like dental work. It means choosing games you can win rather than games that look impressive.

There's an old African proverb: "The lizard had the tree in mind when challenging the dog to a fight." Most people choose battles based on what seems prestigious rather than what plays to their actual advantages, which is like choosing dance partners based on their appearance rather than their ability to dance without stepping on your feet.

What's your unique edge? Not what you wish it was (which is probably something involving creative genius and natural charisma) or what you think it should be (which is probably something socially admirable), but what it actually is right now, in this moment, with your current skills and limitations? What games favor that edge rather than exposing your weaknesses to public scrutiny?

The Execution Gap

The security awareness training was initially terrible in the way that most first attempts at anything are terrible. I had researched adult learning theory with academic thoroughness, studied persuasion techniques with the dedication of someone preparing for psychological warfare, analyzed behavioral psychology until I could recite Skinner's principles in my sleep, and yet I delivered presentations that had the inspirational power of a tax code reading.

I was drowning in inputs while producing outputs that would have embarrassed a broken vending machine¹⁵.

Here's what separates potential from performance, theory from practice, good intentions from actual results: the willingness to produce something imperfect and iterate based on real feedback rather than hypothetical improvements. Everyone has potential when they're young and untested; people stop caring about potential as you age the way they stop caring about your SAT scores after college. They only care about delivery.

The breakthrough came when I stopped trying to create the perfect presentation (which would have taken approximately forever) and started focusing on changing actual behavior (which could be measured in weeks). I measured click rates on simulated phishing emails before and after training sessions. The data was humbling but actionable, like most honest feedback about your actual capabilities rather than your theoretical potential.

Most people get stuck mistaking preparation for progress, research for results, planning for performance. They collect inputs with the enthusiasm of bibliophiles collecting rare books, but struggle to transform knowledge into outcomes the way some people struggle to transform ingredients into edible meals. Value gets created during execution, not preparation, which is obvious in theory but surprisingly difficult to accept in practice.

The Truth About Inputs and Outputs

If you want extraordinary results, you need extraordinary inputs, not just effort, but strategic effort applied consistently over time with the kind of focused intensity that makes observers wonder about your mental health. Life involves challenging tradeoffs and sacrifices that would make ancient philosophers weep with recognition. There's no shortcut around this mathematics, despite what self-help books and motivational speakers might suggest about life hacks and productivity secrets.

But here's what's tricky about the input-output relationship, in the way that most important relationships are tricky: inputs and outputs can be disconnected short-term while remaining correlated long-term, like exercise and fitness or education and wisdom. The person who studies cybersecurity every weekend for two years might not see immediate career advancement, but they're building capabilities that compound over time the way interest compounds in investment accounts¹⁶.

The question isn't whether you're working hard. Everyone works hard at something (even if it's avoiding work). The question is whether you're working hard on things that matter to people who can influence your career trajectory, which requires understanding the difference between activity and accomplishment.

The Likability Dividend

People want to do business with people they like, which seems obvious until you realize how many competent professionals sabotage themselves by being difficult to work with. Technical skills get you considered for opportunities; interpersonal skills get you chosen for them. This is the difference between being qualified and being selected.

Being likable doesn't mean being agreeable about everything or avoiding difficult conversations that need to happen. It means making interactions with you feel productive rather than draining. Aim to be the kind of person others want on their team when problems get complicated rather than the kind they want to avoid when stress levels rise.

The Opportunity Recognition Problem

The best opportunities don't announce themselves with fanfare and obvious signage. They appear as tiny cracks rather than open doors, which means capitalizing on them requires awareness to spot the opening (like noticing a slightly ajar door) and courage to act despite uncertainty (like walking through that door without knowing what's on the other side).

The security incident that launched my career didn't feel like an opportunity in the moment. It felt like a crisis wrapped in an emergency with a side of all-you-can-eat panic. But crises reveal capability gaps the way low tide reveals what's been hidden underwater, and capability gaps represent openings for people willing to fill them rather than complaining about their existence.

Most opportunities require you to start before you feel ready (which is almost always), act before you feel qualified (which is the human condition), and commit before you feel certain (which requires the kind of faith typically reserved for religious experiences). The people who wait for obvious opportunities often find them already occupied by those who recognized them earlier, the way early birds find worms while late birds find empty ground.

The Old-Fashioned Fundamentals

Look people in the eye when speaking to them. Do what you say you'll do when you said you'd do it. Show up early rather than exactly on time. Practice good posture as if your spine actually matters. Have a confident handshake that suggests you're glad to meet people rather than reluctantly tolerating social contact. Listen more than you speak, which is harder than it sounds in a culture that rewards talking.

These behaviors are free and never go out of style, which makes them the business equivalent of basic hygiene—unremarkable when present, noticeable when absent.

In our digital age, basic human courtesies have become surprisingly rare competitive advantages. The person who responds promptly to emails, prepares thoroughly for meetings, and treats everyone with respect stands out simply by being professional, which is roughly equivalent to standing out by being literate in a society where reading has become optional.

The Distraction Trap

Side hustles sound appealing until you realize that most income streams aren't actually passive. They require mental energy, emotional bandwidth, and temporal investment that might be better applied to your primary career trajectory. If something requires your attention or creates complexity in your life, it might be pulling focus from work that matters more, the way background noise can interfere with concentration even when you're not consciously listening to it.

The most successful people I know are ruthlessly focused in the way that lasers are focused. They become exceptionally good at specific things rather than mediocre at many things. They understand that attention is their most valuable resource, more precious than time or money or social connections.

The Loyalty Illusion

Your employer probably doesn't care about you the way you think they do. This isn't a cynical observation so much as a realistic assessment of organizational psychology. Everyone's your friend until difficult decisions need to be made, at which point friendship tends to evaporate faster than enthusiasm for New Year's resolutions. Understanding this isn't cynical; it's strategic. It means taking responsibility for your own development rather than expecting others to manage your career with the same care you would apply to managing your own interests.

This doesn't mean being disloyal or uncommitted to your current employer. It means recognizing that loyalty is a two-way street, and streets can be closed for construction without advance notice.

The Uncomfortable Equation

Two years later, I'm sitting in Marcus Chen's office again, but this time the dynamic has shifted in ways that would have seemed impossible during that first panicked Thursday afternoon. His company just signed a three-year contract extension with our firm, specifically requesting that I lead their security operations. The same person who once handed me an impossible problem now considers me indispensable, which is the professional equivalent of being promoted from expendable red-shirt extra to leading character.

But here's what I understand now that I didn't then, with the clarity that only comes from surviving experiences that initially seemed designed to destroy your confidence: Marcus wasn't throwing me into the deep end to watch me drown for his entertainment. He was unknowingly creating an opportunity for me to discover what I was capable of becoming. In the same way, coaches create opportunities for athletes to exceed their own expectations rather than simply confirming their current limitations.

The incident wasn't a crisis that happened to me; it was a transformation I happened to navigate successfully enough to survive with my career intact.

Every principle I've described: value creation, reliability, energy alignment, strategic game selection, the willingness to accept feedback, the courage to execute despite uncertainty. These aren't separate concepts scattered randomly across the landscape of professional development. They're part of a single uncomfortable equation that governs how careers actually develop rather than how we wish they would develop.

The equation is simple in theory, brutal in practice: Competence equals the sum of problems you've solved that you initially had no business solving, multiplied by your willingness to seek out the next problem beyond your current capabilities, divided by your attachment to staying comfortable.

Most people optimize for the wrong variables with the mathematical precision of someone trying to solve calculus problems using finger paints. They focus on collecting credentials rather than capabilities, on appearing qualified rather than becoming qualified, on managing perceptions rather than managing reality. They mistake the scorecard for the game, confusing the menu with the meal¹⁷.

But the people who become truly valuable, the ones others fight to work with, the ones who get called when everything is falling apart, the ones who transform organizations and industries, they've learned to optimize for a different metric entirely: their capacity to reliably transform the unknown into the manageable.

It's almost never about intelligence or talent or luck, which are distributed randomly and beyond your control. It's about developing what psychologists call "growth mindset" and what I call "problem-solving stamina." This is the ability to stay curious and resourceful when faced with challenges that exceed your current knowledge, the way marathon runners stay motivated when their bodies start suggesting stopping is a reasonable option.

Your career isn't built on what you already know how to do. It's built on your willingness to repeatedly become the person who can do things you don't yet know how to do. Everything else—the networking, the positioning, the personal branding—is just decoration around this central fact. It's frosting on a cake that hasn't been baked yet.

When someone calls you at 3:47 PM with a problem that's beyond your current expertise, you have two choices: you can explain why you're not qualified, or you can start figuring out how to become qualified.

Every person you consider valuable, every expert you admire, every leader you respect, got there because they chose the second option over and over again, transforming each impossible 3:47 PM moment into the foundation of who they became.

¹ A chocolate teapot would actually be more useful than most undergraduate computer science educations when facing real-world crises, because at least you could eat the teapot for emergency calories while contemplating your career choices.

² Advanced Persistent Threats, or APTs, are the cybersecurity equivalent of having your house burgled by someone who not only steals your valuables but also rearranges your furniture, changes your Wi-Fi password, and leaves passive-aggressive notes about your home security while living in your attic for six months without detection.

³ Password resets constitute roughly 60% of all IT support tickets, which would be depressing if it weren't so lucrative for people who have memorized the phrase "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

⁴ The butterfly metaphor breaks down when you realize that caterpillars at least have genetic programming for their transformation, whereas humans are expected to figure out metamorphosis without an instruction manual while being observed by people who are equally confused but better at hiding it.

⁵ Swiss watches are sophisticated because Swiss people spent centuries perfecting the art of making tiny mechanical components work together reliably, which is the opposite of how most computer systems are designed.

⁶ "Living off the land" in cybersecurity means using legitimate system tools for malicious purposes. It's robbing a bank using the bank's own pens, deposit slips, and cheerful customer service representatives.

⁷ Metacognition is thinking about thinking, which sounds like the kind of recursive mental exercise that could cause infinite loops in human consciousness if not properly managed with adequate coffee intake.

⁸ IKEA furniture assembly teaches you that following instructions carefully still results in leftover parts that seem important but have no obvious purpose, which is excellent preparation for incident response where you always discover additional problems that weren't mentioned in the initial problem description.

⁹ Plumbers create value by making water go where it's supposed to go instead of where it wants to go. This requires understanding both physics and human psychology because water doesn't care about your preferences.

¹⁰ Hand-washing before surgery seems obvious now, but doctors resisted this practice for decades because it implied their hands weren't naturally sterile, which would have been insulting if it weren't literally killing people.

¹¹ Telephones used to be physical objects that connected specific locations through copper wires, which made troubleshooting easier because you could actually follow the wires to find problems, unlike modern networks which exist in a quantum state of maybe-working-maybe-not.

¹² A screen door submarine would at least be amusing to watch sink; most security postures are just depressing to examine because they represent good intentions undermined by budget constraints and organizational politics.

¹³ Teaching quantum physics to golden retrievers would probably be more successful than most security awareness training because dogs sometimes pay attention when you're talking to them.

¹⁴ Tax preparation seminars exist in a special category of human torture designed to make people appreciate the relative excitement of watching fingernails grow or paint dry.

¹⁵ Broken vending machines at least keep your money when they fail to deliver; bad presentations waste everyone's time without providing even the entertainment value of mechanical failure.

¹⁶ Compound interest works so well that Einstein allegedly called it the eighth wonder of the world, though he probably didn't anticipate it being applied to cybersecurity expertise accumulated through weekend study sessions.

¹⁷ Confusing the scorecard with the game is judging restaurants by their Yelp reviews rather than their food. This explains why some highly-rated establishments serve mediocre meals with excellent marketing.